Family members of an Aboriginal teenager found dead in the 1980s have confronted police in Tamworth, accusing them of not doing enough to solve the case. The protest outside Tamworth police station prompted the crime manager to reveal that the case would be reviewed by the State Crime Command's homicide squad.
The family of Gomeroi teenager Mark Haines, 17, who was found dead on train tracks outside of Tamworth in 1988, rallied outside Tamworth police station on the 29th anniversary of his death on Monday. They demanded to know why police had failed to follow up on fresh leads in the case.
Family members held placards, with messages including: "What happened to Mark" and "Aboriginal lives matter". They maintain Haines was murdered.
"We want to know what happened to our boy, we want justice," said Don Craigie, Haines' uncle, outside the police station. "If this was a white teenager the case would be solved."
Last year the case was reopened after mother and daughter Faye and Colleen Souter came forward after reading BuzzFeed News' coverage of the case.
They say that their son and brother Terry drove the car with Haines' body in it.
Despite the new leads it took a confrontation between Detective Craig Dunn, who is in charge of the case, and Greens MP David Shoebridge, at the end of last year for the police to take comprehensive statements from the Souters.
Shoebridge then used a parliamentary speech to lobby for the case to be placed with the homicide squad in Sydney, and wrote a letter to the NSW police commissioner Andrew Scipione asking for the case be removed from Oxley LAC due to incompetence.
Today Oxley command crime manager Phil O’Reilly told Shoebridge and the family that the homicide squad of the State Crime Command will review the case.
"There has been some consultation with State Crime Command and I understand that the State Crime Command [is] willing to conduct a review of the investigation into Mark Haines," O’Reilly told Haines' family.
"New information that we've received via Crimestoppers in April was again looked at by our investigation and they are still looking at some of that information," O'Reilly said.
"This is such a relief for the family," Craigie said. "All we want is an investigation that looks at everything. Aboriginal lives matter too."